Should The Daily Mail Web Site Be Banned From Answerbank?

[anotheoldgit]

It would appear from the various of anti Daily Mail comments that appear regularly on the news section of Answerbank, that many would only be too pleased to see it banned from this site.

Since the Daily Mail has the largest combined monthly readership according to this Guardian report.

/// Overall, the Daily Mail still had the largest combined monthly readership across the board with 18.8 million print and online readers, followed by the Sun with just under 17 million and the Guardian in third. In terms of weekly and daily readers, the Sun remained the most popular newspaper with 12.6 million and 7.2 million combined readers respectively. ///

What does this say about some contributors to this site, are they themselves closeted readers of this newspaper and don't like to admit it?

[andy-hughes]

What's a 'pinko leftie'?

[anotheoldgit]

FredPuli43

/// No. I am all for something that provides material for the uncritical and amusement for the rest ///

Pleased to see that the figures prove there are more who are none critical, than those who seem to have an unusual sense of humour, while at the same time critical of others.

[Zeuhl]

/the figures prove there are more who are none critical/

no sh1t sherlock

and there was me thinking our species was 90% enquiring minds

[ludwig]

//What's a 'pinko leftie'? //

from the urban dictionary

pinko
2. Lukewarm communist. Half-way communist. Quasi-communist. Socialist. Uber-collectivist. A Leftista who is not a member of an official communist organization or government. "Anarchists" who support Big Government policies (charlatans). One who believes in peace, order, and appeasement. One who believes in majority rule (mobocracy).

lefty
1. a leftist person, a liberal

[anotheoldgit]

Gromit

/// And how would you ban it? ///

/// I mean technically? ///

Now think about it Gromit, it could be disallowed on this site, technically or any other way.

Was it not I who was lampooned for daring to enter a none offensive passage from what turned out to be a Far Right publication unknowing to myself.

Had it had been an excerpt from a Far-Left publication, there would not have been an eyebrow lifted except from the very small amount of Right-Wingers who steadfastly remain on this site.

[sp1814]

God bless you for posting this thread AOG. Seriously...I saw this article earlier today and considered posting a question about the Daily Mail's ethics, but decided against it, because I thought it would be petty.

But seeing as you have brought up the subject of this trash newspaper...please explain this:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2013/sep/30/mail-on-sunday-kenya-photo

What does this say about the Mail?

Does it say that it plays fast and loose with the truth?

Should we not expect certain standards of journalistic ethics from our newspapers? Or should we expect them to bend the truth and print completely fake pictures because they have such little respect for their readers?

[FredPuli43]

AOG, it may well be that large numbers of people accept the Daily Mail's stories without bothering to analyse the language used or the presentation or look out for journalistic devices; they are uncritical. There is no reason for you to be among them. (And I bet I am at least as right wing as you)

[sp1814]

AOG

In answer to your question as to whether the Daily Mail should be banned.

Absolutely not. What a bizarre notion - that a national newspaper should be banned. What on earth for?

Just because some people might think it's rubbish, isn't justification for a ban.

That's insane!

[Zeuhl]

The talented people at populist tabloids such as The Mail know that business and career success comes not from telling the truth but from telling people what they want to hear.

For example; Steve Doughty’s Mail article lamenting Britain’s failure to /stem rise in teen pregnancy/ tells us that rates have risen to around 3.1 percent, but defines teenage girls as anyone between 15 and 19. That’s technically accurate, but there’s a difference surely between pregnant schoolchildren and adults who are old enough to get married and have kids.
Unless the Mail are campaigning to raise the legal age for marriage to 21.

And it’s no surprise to see the same author behind another bit of wordplay, under a headline that aog would be proud of:

/Teen pregnancy fuels record abortion rates/

/200,000 abortions were carried out in Britain/ Doughty tells us, /including the highest number ever on teenagers./

That number turns out to be roughly 3,000 – or 1.5 percent – of the total. So teen pregnancy 'fuelled' national abortion rates in the sense that you might 'fuel' a bonfire by chucking a twig on it.

Most people don't want to be statisticians, but the worrying aspect is that eventually people will refuse to accept verified evidence on important issues in favour of the preconceived notions instilled by papers like The Mail

[AB Editor]

"And how would you ban it? I mean technically?"

Hi Gromit,

We would have to put it into the swear filter so dailymail.com = sovietmuesliknittersunion.ru or something :)

[Zeuhl]

Ed

that would be funny

can you please do that anyway?

[craft1948]

I love my Daily Mail, I even pay to have it delivered every day...................

[Gromit]

AOG

// Was it not I who was lampooned for daring to enter a none offensive passage from what turned out to be a Far Right publication unknowing to myself. //

You claimed that you were an avid reader of it (when you weren't). You were not daring, you were clueless and couldn't tell that it was run by right wing extremists.

But you were able to post the link. Anyone can post a link to anything. As far as I know there are no filters that can prevent a link being posted. A previous Ed used to manually delete some links if they were to extremist websites because some search engines make that association and put warnings on some sites. The ed didn't want to scare off advertisers if AB was full of links to Stormfront.

So, it would be impossible to ban links to the DM.

[Gromit]

Ed,

Every Daily Mail link is different. I suspect the swear filter wouldn't be able to tell one from the other.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/unfunnycartoonbyMAC.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/excellentcrossword.html

[FredPuli43]

Andrew Marr in his current book on the Great War, as reviewed in the Sunday papers, says that one of Lord Northcliffe's sayings was that to sell his papers he had 'to give them [the public] something to hate' . That explained, in particular, why his paper was vilifying the Kaiser in the period before that war. His paper was the Daily Mail. The principle remains, does it not? That is one of the features of the current paper

[jno]

the principle remains, but absent the Kaiser we are now invited to hate cellulite.

I can't believe that link to unfunny cartoons by Mac doesn't work.

[Kromovaracun]

I'm doubtless one of the posters AOG is referring to, so let me make some clarifications....

*I do not wish to see the Daily Mail banned on Answerbank. I wish to see it die out completely. I wish to see any newspaper that deliberately misreports facts die out. In fact, as I've said several times, I sincerely hope that by the time I'm an old man, no newspapers will be published in Britain at all. I think they have an overwhelmingly negative effect on public decision making, because they do not care about whether their information is true.


* I keep up with the Daily Mail's actions generally not by reading its site itself, but by following blogs that are dedicated to watching the Press and correcting mistakes that are published in the media. Nevertheless, I cannot ignore the Daily Mail because its effects are so damaging - it wields catastrophic influence. The most sensational example of this is its role in the MMR scandal, but also in my more recent thread the Mail was revealed to have deliberately lied about climate change.

I am not addicted to the Daily Mail, but if I am going to criticise it, then I feel I should be informed about it - and that's what I try to achieve. I do not rely on it for news coverage, I study it purely because it's a persuasive example of its own destructiveness.

[sp1814]

AOG

Do you have any comment on why the Daily Mail chose to fool it's readers with the fake picture from the siege?

Does it make you wonder what else they fake?

[mikey4444]

No of course I don't think the DM should be banned...how else are we to get our laughs every day ?

[sp1814]

I've just revisited the OP - and there's something odd.

Look at this:

"It would appear from the various of anti Daily Mail comments that appear regularly on the news section of Answerbank, that many would only be too pleased to see it banned from this site."

Notice the challenge and response:

The OP is positing that because so many of us slate the Daily Mail, we want it banned from AB.

AOG - can you please explain how you got to that conclusion?

I ask, because it's a pretty big leap to make.

I mean, there are plenty of people on AB who criticise the Labour Party, or who criticise the LibDems or who criticise the Tories - do you think that these people also want mention of these parties banned from AB?

Please let us into your thought process..

Seriously.